


The Foreign Concept of Mercy

by rainer76



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-21
Updated: 2012-06-21
Packaged: 2017-11-08 06:06:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/439979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainer76/pseuds/rainer76
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two meetings and one ending.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Foreign Concept of Mercy

1/. Natasha. (2002)

 

He’s a short-ass, maybe five foot eight and only if his hair’s styled to the correct height. Compact. Natasha met his arrow before she spotted the archer and she can say it without irony, there’s a tear through her left earlobe, blood running down the side of her neck where a looped earring once dangled. Her gun-arm holds steady. Svenski is silent on comms, has been for eighteen minutes and passing, the soft inhale, exhalation of his breath muted. Ivanovic, her handler, has been radio dead from the moment Natasha disobeyed directives.

From the opposite end of the alley, the archer grins at her sunnily.

He’s perched on the lip of a garbage dumpster, balanced on his haunches with the bow strapped across his back, a snub-nosed gun dangling between his thighs carelessly.   Her chamber is empty, the clip spent, the distance between them too great to charge, and there’s precious little shelter available for cover in the alleyway. “Svenski?” she mouths. The sniper’s had her back for three years straight. Natasha has fallen between the sheets of powerful men, wrapped her thighs around their necks and let them lick before twisting. She’s gutted a man in her garters and bra. Garrotted a politician fully clothed and without breaking a nail. She’s listened to Svenski jerk off, his little moans carrying across comms, felt his scope centred on her spine. She’s watched him blow the skull off a man at fifteen hundred metres in a high wind during fool’s light, the shadows stretching long and the sun already gone, the sky violet and dark as a swelling bruise.

If he can make the shot, then Natasha needs Svenski to do so. Right now.

“Do you think I’d come down from the high ground if he were alive?” He sounds honestly curious, American, accent mid-west, husky at the edges. Casually, he adds. “Ivanovic passed Svenski the kill order.”

Natasha doesn’t react to the casual mention of her handler or what those words pertain. She’s never cared for Ivanovic. Natasha faltered only once on mission - when she stared into the almond eyes of a girl who was eight years old, who shared Natasha’s colouration - and saw the way her breathing had hitched, hidden under her father’s desk where he sat murdered. Natasha had coaxed her into the open, taken stock, seen herself mirrored in the child’s countenance, pale and frightened, and despite all of that, still staring Natasha in the eye. An orphan now, new recruit; if she survived the training.   _Bring her in_ , Ivanovic ordered, and Natasha put a bullet in her eye.

As an assassin for Red Door, it was her first act of compassion. Her first show of mercy. She’s flawed now like the diamonds studded in her garrotte, twinned with piano wire and sharp enough to cut through bone. Natasha lets her gun drop, a useless pretention, listens with one ear to the sirens in the distance and changes tactics. She straightens, chin raised, hip canted. “Are you going to wait all night?”

Ivanovic ordered Svenski to kill her, and now both men are dead. Natasha knows how to sell sex, to lower her eyes demurely, and whatever else, he hasn’t killed her yet.

From his vantage point at the opposite end of the alleyway, the archer laughs out-right. “Sweetheart, I wasn’t planning on getting that close.” And shoots her in the chest.

 _Mercy,_ she mouths, fading fast, and thinks a single bullet to the eye would be kind, but it’s a tranq piercing her breastbone, and when he appears, swimming out of focus, he follows the movement of her lips casually.

“What’s that?” he asks, without humour.

 

2/. Steve. (2012)

 

“It’s Barton.”

Fury raises his head, the muscle in his jaw twitches once. “If this is about Loki…”

“It isn’t,” Steve shifts, shoulders firming, his expression strained. “The man’s a sniper.”

Fury quirks an eyebrow. “That didn’t seem to bother you when he was shooting down Loki’s thugs on the rooftop. And I know you still remember enough of the War not to dismiss their value.”

“I know the value of a marksman, sir, but this isn’t war and the Avengers…they’re meant to _stand_ for something.”

If possible, the temperature in the room drops. “Continue.”

“A sniper isn’t the same as a soldier, sir, and you know it. It’s not fighting in the trenches, not protecting the man beside you. The _mentality_ is completely different. They’re…removed.” Killers he doesn’t say, in the truest sense of the word. Colder than Black Widow, who turns into liquid motion when fighting, a dance or flirtation that’s spectacular to behold. Steve meets his eyes, thinks about watching someone from a distance, day in and day out while waiting for the kill-order. Knowing what they have for dinner, what time they take a piss, knowing their families, friends, the intimate circles woven around them.  Hidden so far away - and taking the shot without reflection. Perfect, every single time. “They’re not _like_ us. They’re the types of guys who make soldiers nervous.”

“Then I suggest you get to know him.”

“I don’t want him on my team. Whether the psych evals clear him after Loki or not.”

“Phil Coulson did. Want him on your team.”

He feels like a dick when he says it. Steve may have been born in the 1920s but he’s not naïve to manipulation.  He saw what they had planned for the Hulk. “That name will only get you so much mileage, sir.”

Fury steeples his fingers. “You want to be a Cap, Captain? Then figure out your team. This isn’t the 40’s, and black and white smudged into grey years ago.”

He leaves the office to find Barton leaning against the opposite corridor, slouched like a teenager, ankles crossed. Barton stays on the helicarrier, the only member of their team held apart. Steve keeps himself from faltering, knows from Barton’s neutral expression he overheard every word spoken. “Fury wanted you to blow our heads off, didn’t he? If we got out of line?”

“Yes, sir.”    

“Good to know. You’re moving into the mansion with the rest of us.”

And the hell of the thing is, Steve is a soldier, ridiculous costume aside he’s military through and through, Barton’s the only member of his team he can rely on to follow orders…seventy per cent of the time. Steve trains, runs the streets, kills time on the heavy bags between missions. He hits the road at 5:15 am, the pavement clean with rain, everything dark and pristine. His enhances don’t help him worth a damn. He doesn’t see or hear anything, there’s no prickling sensation between his shoulder blades, the sixth sense of knowing when a scope is pointed in his direction. There’s a _thwack_ as something hits the centre of his forehead, smarts like a _son of a bitch_ , throwing him off stride, then red runs through his vision.

He stumbles, drops to a crouch. Strawberry flavoured gel, he thinks, and wipes his fingers clean.

Barton steps into view, soundless in the rain. His t-shirt is plastered to his torso, hair standing upright like a bedraggled crow. There’s a rifle strapped over his shoulders, his eyes avarice bright. “You’re dead.” He says it simply, irrevocable fact, then jogs past, melts into the shadows and is gone again. Floored, Steve doesn’t know what to make of the encounter. He survived the ice.  The Nazis.  He doesn’t know if he could survive an explosive arrow to the brain. He comes back to the mansion to find Barton curled on the couch with Natasha, her head in his lap. Clint meets his eyes; Natasha turns her head to stare. Steve feels the mark in the centre of his forehead like a bulls-eye.

“Are you going to try and murder me every day?”

“I like to keep in practice.”

“You need to hang out with someone other than Natasha.”

“Wasn’t the real thing,” he says blandly, and Steve thinks it a little chilling for the lack of emotionality. The Widow smiles thinly. Barton merely blinks at him, slow.

After a week, Steve knows not to wear good clothing on _any_ of his pre-dawn runs. He comes back with a collection of splotches, red dots, some of them unusual, like the one placed in the centre of his forearm. Steve would have dismissed it as a poor aim until the next time he’s in his costume; it's only then he sees the dot aligns perfectly with where his gauntlet ends, centred on the radial artery. Finding all the weaknesses in his suit, Hawkeye’s been pointing them out to Steve helpfully; in the threatening colours of blood.

He hits the street with his enhances stretched wide, looking for the kill point, the high ground, the eyrie and the foxhole. He blurs into super speed at moments of paranoia, then slows down, chagrined. Steve changes his route randomly and still comes back dead everyday. The only thing that changes is the location of the ambush, sometimes closer to Stark tower, sometimes ranging further away.

“We could take it into the boxing ring, if there's a problem?”

Barton tilts his head back, eyes wide, deceptively innocent. “I might not be Stark clever, but I pride myself on a little intelligence.”

He could say its cowardly not to show himself, that every Avenger is accountable and easily _seen_ , even Natasha with her blazing hair, but Clint’s the colour of dirt, sandy-haired, tanned skin, his eyes are worn out denim, faded blue like the dawn of a winter sky.

“Baiting me is intelligent?”

“No. But it’s certainly fun.”

Steve pauses, and wonders if this is what it’s about, not an idle threat, carried out and perpetrated again and again but an invitation to play. Snipers are uncomfortably close to psychotic on the psychology chart - kissing cousins to a serial killer. They don’t fall off the edge often but when they do, they’re a publicity nightmare for the military. They’re the type of guys _soldiers_ are scared of, and Clint’s the type of guy Phil Coulson tried to impart on the team. He’s not enhanced, doesn’t have armour or impenetrable green skin, he isn’t a god, but he’s a gosh darn _outrageous _shot and he’s been proving it to Steve every day of the week. Keep him close, he thinks quietly, and wonders at Coulson’s motivation: if he were aiming a weapon at the Avengers (If that’s why Loki _took__ _ Barton in the first place, a sick sense of destiny) or if he were holding a loose tether.

“Do we have paint guns on hand?” he asks Tony a couple of days later, curious. His running t-shirt resembles a painting-smock for a three year old by this stage and he’s starting to feel...vindictive.

“Of course we do.”

Steve taps a foot impatiently.

“What? Ask Jarvis. Busy here.”

He takes to the streets armed, body falling into rhythm, not even close to being out of breath. He doesn’t extend his run, keeps it close to the original route, eyes loose and scanning, the paintball gun in plain sight. For a moment he thinks he sees someone shadowing him, one block over, hitting each intersection at the exact moment Steve does. It took Steve embarrassingly long to realise paint pellets meant close proximity, at least in terms of a sniper range. They’re not designed to travel far, and all the time he spent scanning rooftops in fits of paranoia were a moot point. Jarvis, he’s learnt, is a hell of lot more helpful than Tony.

He’s the Cap, both oldest and the youngest, and it’s _his_ team. Everything else he ever held dear crumpled away but not that, not his rank or his understanding of what it meant. He’s heard Barton addressed in any number of ways on the helicarrier: Fury’s man is the most common - Coulson’s Hawk, he thinks, is the most accurate - but Phil’s dead, Loki stripped Barton of everything he thought he was, and there’s no one left holding the tether. This hasn’t been a match of spatial awareness, of someone pulling a trigger from miles and miles away, of maintaining distance; this is Clint circling in close.

This is more like playing with Bucky on the streets of Brooklyn, where every game was the Tommy’s against the Fritz, and the enemy could pop out from any milk crate. This is Captain Steve Rogers, dying in 2012 with a paintball pellet to the forehead, with Clint sidling close and mumuring dispassionately, “You’re dead,” with something _bright_ in his eyes, silken as a promise.

“Maybe,” Steve agrees, and thinks about ice, of being smothered and buried alive.  He fires back. “But I got better.”

 

3/. Loki. (2012)

 

_...it was easy, taking you..._

_...you know how to follow orders..._

_...checks and balances, hawk, killing them is what you were supposed to do, it’s what Fury **wanted** if things got out of hand. Isn’t this right, to make sure you’re utilized for the purpose you were designed?  so much cleaner..._

_...distance hawk, don’t swoop too close, don’t linger too long..._

Except he lingers too long. He knows Natasha is behind him before he turns, saw her following him among the pipes and overhead beams. His shoulders have drawn tight, climbing toward his ears. She’ll shoot, he thinks, knows it, knows it, _knows_ it, until he can’t ignore it any longer. He spins, engages viciously, with full intent on murder because he can't hold back now, and wonders why she didn’t shoot, why she didn't end this from afar with a single bullet to his eye.  He wonders, teeth bared, where the fuck her mercy is.


End file.
